At just 40mm wide the Blaxter X40 looks very much like a small toy model with a bunch of blinking LEDs and very unlikely to actually fly. The kids’ hand-sized remote control adds to the whole impression of a non-functional mockup. So the surprise is all the bigger when the little guy actually takes off. It’s a real quadcopter! Continue reading Honey, I shrunk the … quadcopter→

The Zaggometry is a clever little piece of electronics which can read the NAZA GPS coordinates of you copter and send it over the telemetry link down to your Taranis RC-remote for display and logging. In other words, it is a bit like a Flytrex Live flight recorder for your Taranis. The 29€ Zaggomety was developed and is produced(!) by Eberhard Rensch in Germany. In this article I would like to show how I installed it in my TBS Discovery Pro and the data I logged during a test flight (video).

I usually never change a running system but I wanted to play with some new telemetry sensors and all the new LUA scripting features of the openTX 2.0 on my TBS Disco Pro. This is (not yet) an official FrSky firmware. They are stuck at some older, feature restricted 1.x version and they might never offer some of the newer features, as they consider the Taranis a feature complete product. Well, I don’t.

The beautiful intense color of the lavender dominates the landscape of the entire Provence. The magic happens every year in early summer for a couple of weeks and it attracts many painters, photographers and mysterious ladies. Have a look yourself!

The filming took place during a photography workshop with Christian Heeb.

The new gimbal dampener arrived with the wrong number of screws. I should have some spare ones left from the last build.

My 2nd TBS Discovery Pro came with the new improved gimbal dampening arm attached to the back. It should stabilize the camera at high speeds.

The new gimbal stabilizer will go deep into the frame, close the the NAZA in order to stabilize the camera rotational movements.

In order to fit everything, the NAZA controller is placed slightly forward outside the marked rectangle. This way, the edge of the X8R is just short of to the mounting hole for the red spacers which will later connect to the top plate.

The X8R antennas can be zip tied to the arms. Both, the antenna and the arms, have a rounded shape which makes the placement relatively flush and solid. The zip ties keep them in place, minor movement is still possible.

Closeup of the X8R lying sideways inside the frame.

Different angle of the frisky X8R placement inside the frame, flush to the NAZA.

The X8R is placed lying on the side, with the short cables going out to the antennas on the two arms.

On my 2nd build, I’ve placed the video transmitter on top. TBS sells a special mount, which is not part of the kit and needs to be ordered separate.

Here I use a FLAME WHEEL VTX mount with a TBS 5.8GHz transmitter

This time I’ve attached the NAZA LED IMU to the bottom of one of the ESCs.

On my second build I try to cram the X8R receiver inside the frame, next to the NAZA with the two antennas on the back arms.

The video shows a compilation of shots taken in and around Zurich in Switzerland. I was flying above the clouds searching for the sun, blowing autumn leaves in the forest and flying over water and chasing cars. The Discovery Pro is a beast and a lot of fun. Want to build your own? Check out my build log: part1, part2 and part3!

The official instructions for binding the X8R receiver to the Taranis are quite confusing and cryptic. Therefore, I try to give step by step instructions about how to bind them in the different available modes as well as some background information. The whole process is split into a preparation phase, mode selection and a binding procedure.

Well, well, we all knew it had to happen. One of my copters crashed. It fell out of the sky, more then 30m onto asphalt. It looked really horrible. The Disco scattered into peaces, it had a totally broken frame with many damaged parts lying around. I could salvage a few pieces from the debris, but I will need to rebuild a new copter from scratch.

Some recovered parts after a crash. The copter fell apart, lost one arm and scattered into peaces.

Luckily nobody got injured and nothing on the ground got damaged. So the worst thing is, that I don’t fully know why it happened. It could have been the almost empty battery, but I could also have been the camera controller board flying into the propellor. I guess I need to do more tests once I have rebuilt my Discovery. I just hoped I would not have to build a second Discovery Pro so soon again 🙁

In the third part of the build log I would like to cover the setup and configuration of the Taranis RC with the TBS Discovery Pro. After covering the mechanical build in part 1 and part 2 of the build log, this part will be about the wiring and programming of the remote control. Due to a crash I’ve build the copter a 2nd time.

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In a dark, dark wood there sat three dark, dark men;
And the dark, dark men were wearing dark, dark googles;
But the dark, dark googles had NO dark, dark screens;
Because on the bright, bright screens there were…… drones!

The beautiful intense color of the lavender dominates the landscape of the entire Provence. The magic happens every year in early summer for a couple of weeks and it attracts many painters, photographers and mysterious ladies. Have a look yourself!

The filming took place during a photography workshop with Christian Heeb.